Many Christians
continue to struggle year after year under the
shame of their past
sins and mistakes. Yes, the Holy Spirit does
convict us of sin,
but many have continued to beat themselves up for
sins that have
already been forgiven. The guilt and shame of our mistakes
seem to stalk us
long after we have been forgiven. Many of us
never move from the
initial experience of being a sinner saved by grace
into the more mature
life of being a saint of the Most High. What most
in the Church need
is a clear view of how God sees them and how they
should be viewing
themselves.
I find the story of
Sarah to be a great insight into how God views us,
both before and
after repentance.
Then they said to
him, “Where is Sarah your wife?”
So he said, “Here,
in the tent.”
And He said, “I will
certainly return to you according to the
time of life, and
behold, Sarah your wife shall have a son.”
(Sarah was listening
in the tent door which was behind him.)
Now Abraham and
Sarah were old, well advanced in age;
and Sarah had passed
the age of childbearing. Therefore Sarah
laughed within
herself, saying, “After I have grown old, shall I
have pleasure, my
lord being old also?”
And the Lord said to
Abraham, “Why did Sarah laugh, saying,
‘Shall I surely bear
a child, since I am old?’ Is anything too hard
for the Lord? At the
appointed time I will return to you, according
to the time of life,
and Sarah shall have a son.”
But Sarah denied it,
saying, “I did not laugh,” for she was afraid.
And He said, “No,
but you did laugh!” (Genesis 18:9-15 NKJV).
This is the historic
account of how Sarah responded in the natural.
It is important to
note that Sarah’s laugh, according to the original
Hebrew root words in
this passage, was a mocking type of laugh. She
was not saying, “Oh
Lord, You are so funny.” She was frustrated and
angry toward God,
scoffing at His declaration. This is not a response
of great faith; it
is as far in the opposite direction as you can get. Yet,
look at how God
remembers this story in the New Testament.
By faith Sarah
herself also received strength to conceive seed,
and she bore a child
when she was past the age, because she
judged Him faithful
who had promised. Therefore from one
man and him as good
as dead, were born as many as the stars
of the sky in
multitude—innumerable as the sand which is by
the seashore
(Hebrews 11:11-12 NKJV).
Just those first
three words alone are shocking. In Genesis, Sarah is
laughing, mocking,
and certainly not full of faith. And then later she
conceived a child,
and God proved Himself faithful. Somewhere along
the way Sarah
repented and God rewrote her story.
Fast-forward to the
writing of Hebrews, and I can imagine God
saying, “OK, this is
how I want you to write this down. ‘By faith
Sarah…’” I wonder if
the writer of Hebrews had a hard time writing
this, yet this is
how the Holy Spirit directed him to record her story. In
the eyes of God,
repentance literally rewrites the account of our lives.
Like Sarah, when we
repent, God changes our history and sets us
back on the path of
our destiny. If He did not do this, the moment we
made our first
mistake we would be doomed—to never reaching our
destiny. Our sin
would have permanently derailed us. Fortunately, God
interacts with us
from our destiny, not our history.
The Past Separates
Us
If we do not realize
that God changes our history when we repent,
we will continue to
see ourselves through a reality that, according to
God, no longer
exists. If He changed our past and we do not make the
transition to seeing
our past through His eyes, we are submitting ourselves
to a false reality.
God goes so far as to tell us that the past does
not belong to us.
So then, no more
boasting about human leaders! All things
are yours, whether
Paul or Apollos or Cephas [Peter] or the
world or life or
death or the present or the future—all are
yours, and you are
of Christ, and Christ is of God (1Corinthians 3:21-23).
All things are ours,
including the present and the future, but the
past is not ours,
and that is why He excluded it from the list. Our past
does not belong to
us; it belongs to God, which is why He can rewrite
it as He so chooses.
He goes on to tell us that our past can separate us
from His love.
For I am convinced
that neither death nor life, neither angels
nor demons, neither
the present nor the future, nor any
powers, neither
height nor depth, nor anything else in all
creation, will be
able to separate us from the love of God that
is in Christ Jesus
our Lord (Romans 8:38-39).
Most people read
this verse and go on to conclude that nothing can
separate us from the
love of God. I would contend that the past was
left off that list
on purpose, because it will separate us from the love of
God. God does not
separate Himself from us, but when we access our
past, we choose to
turn away from Him. Because God does not exist
in our repented-of
past, we literally have to leave God behind when
we choose to dwell
there. By looking back in time, we turn away from
Him and our future,
which is where He already is.
God does not want us
to access our past apart from His rewriting
of it. When we
rehearse the past, we open the opportunity to
repeat it. It is
easy to fall into a cycle of repetition because the past
(which our
repentance changed) does not lead us to our destiny. Let
me repeat: The
repented-of past actually does not exist; therefore, to
go back there is to
live in a false reality that leads to a false present
and a false future.
The danger of
rehearsing the past is the same one that the ancient
heroes and heroines
of faith had to avoid:
All these people
were still living by faith when they died.
They did not receive
the things promised; they only saw them
and welcomed them
from a distance, admitting that they
were foreigners and
strangers on earth. People who say such
things show that
they are looking for a country of their own.
If they had been
thinking of the country they had left,
they would have had
opportunity to return. Instead,
they were longing
for a better country—a heavenly one.
Therefore God is not
ashamed to be called their God, for He
has prepared a city
for them (Hebrews 11:13-16).
If these men and
women had focused on the past, they would have
found themselves
repeating it. The problem is not the content of the
past, but rather,
our focus. We all tend to head toward where we focus,
and as the old
saying goes: If you don’t change your direction, you will
end up where you are
headed.
Hebrews 11:16 says
that “God is not ashamed to be called their God….”
This is not because
they had a spotless past. God is not ashamed
because they did not
make the past their focus. It would have put God
to shame if, after
He had forgiven them, they chose to go back and
rehearse the past
over and over. That would have demonstrated a total
disregard for God’s
forgiveness; it would have shown no desire to move
forward with Him.
Instead, they closed the door on the past. Their
focus was not on
what was behind the door; their focus was on closing
the door.
Hebrews 11 shows us
that making mistakes is forgivable. As long
as our failings are
put in the past, they do not shame God. But when
we keep ourselves
living in and from the past, we never move forward.
Consider this
amazing reality: God does not choose to forgive us
when we repent; He
chose to forgive us 2,000 years ago. Before we were
born, we were
completely forgiven.
Thus, the purpose of
repentance is not pleading with or convincing
God to forgive a
particular sin; He has already provided forgiveness for
us. Likewise, God
does not show us our sins to demand an apology,
but so that we can
see those sins for what they are and the harm they
cause. When we see
this, we will repent and turn away from it. When
we repent, we turn
our heart back to Him so we can receive His forgiveness.
Once we have
received the forgiveness He already purchased
for us, there is no
more need for repentance.
Many have said that
the Old Testament was works-based salvation
and that the New
Testament is grace-based salvation. The truth is that
faith has always
been the only way to righteousness in both the Old
and New Testaments.
“For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith…” (Eph. 2:8).
In the Old
Testament, animal sacrifices were performed not as
works, but in faith
as a proclamation looking forward to the day of
Jesus’ sacrifice
(see Heb 8:5; Col. 2:16-17). The Old Testament saints
believed toward a
coming Messiah, whereas New Testament saints
believe back toward
the completed work of the Messiah. In both cases,
it is a matter of
faith, because people in both eras receive by faith from
the same event in
history: Jesus’ death on the cross in a.d. 33.
Before we were born,
before we sinned, and before we repented,
Jesus had already
provided forgiveness for us on the cross 2,000 years
ago. “He is the
atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but
also for the sins of
the whole world” (1 John 2:2). Jesus died not only
for our sins, but
also for every sin ever committed. God has chosen to
forgive all sin for
all time. So now we must make the choice to receive
His forgiveness by
faith.
Like a steel cable
of forgiveness suspended throughout all of eternity,
Jesus’ shed blood
runs through the whole timeline infinitely
in both directions.
He established forgiveness for all sin before any
humans were even
created and made it accessible by faith.
Jesus was “the Lamb who was
slain from the creation of the world” (Rev. 13:8).
All that one must do
to receive forgiveness is reach out and grasp it by faith!
